The Latest

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

AMC bid farewell to The Walking Dead for another summer with a big spike to 6.92 for the finale. It was down 15% year-to-year, about in line with the -13% for the full spring season. More good news for AMC is that the zombies will keep coming next week with the return of Fear the Walking Dead, which was promoted pretty relentlessly throughout this TWD half-season.

The biggest return of the week was FX's Archer, but its 0.54 rating was down 30% from last year's premiere.

Did some cable sub-demo data mining, and added the True Power Rankings "Skew" and "Male" color schemes to this table. As always, keep in mind you can sort these things by clicking on the categories!

It becomes fairly clear that cable should have a different "heat map" than broadcast, but applying the broadcast heat map helps visualize some things. It's pretty obvious, for example, that almost all the top cable originals skew much more toward the 18-49 demo than the median broadcast series. Quite a few shows are on par with or even above the most demo-skewing broadcast series (Family Guy at 61%).

And the top shows also largely skew male; not just more male than the 40%ish broadcast median, but actually more males than females. FX's Archer and AMC's Better Call Saul go even well beyond the 60% area, which is where the most male-skewing broadcast scripted series (Fox's animation and CW's superhero shows) tend to reside.

The table is a bit biased due to what happens to be on the air right now. For example, cable certainly wouldn't be all green; TNT's Major Crimes (18%) and Rizzoli and Isles (20%) skew almost as out-of-demo as the oldest-skewing CBS series. And there would be more TGIT-esque female representation if other Freeform series like Pretty Little Liars (23% male) and The Fosters (25%) were still airing. This table will soon extend beyond just the last week again, so you'll be able to see more of those examples.

FULL TABLE:

Name

Net

Ep

A18-49

Last

Seas

Avg

y2y

Proj

ProjPlus

Skew

Male

The Walking Dead Spring

AMC

16

6.92

+19%

6

6.33

-13%

6.33

430

61%

53%

Talking Dead Spring

AMC

8

3.07

+31%

5

2.56

-7%

2.56

174

60%

51%

American Crime Story

FX

9

1.11

-7%

1

1.33

1.31

89

51%

50%

Better Call Saul

AMC

8

0.81

+4%

2

0.90

-45%

0.85

58

53%

67%

Vikings

HIST

7

0.69

+3%

4

0.67

-16%

0.68

46

39%

58%

Shameless

SHOW

12

0.66

+18%

5

0.64

-9%

0.64

43

52%

50%

Archer

FX

1

0.54

7

0.54

-30%

0.38

26

64%

67%

Shadowhunters

FREE

12

0.32

-3%

1

0.42

0.41

28

55%

30%

Broad City

COME

7

0.36

+6%

1

0.38

0.37

25

76%

Awkward Fall

MTV

15

0.25

-19%

3

0.36

-30%

0.36

24

66%

26%

Billions

SHOW

11

0.33

-3%

1

0.33

0.33

22

40%

60%

The Magicians

SYFY

12

0.28

0%

1

0.30

0.30

21

49%

Underground

WGNA

4

0.29

+21%

1

0.30

0.28

19

36%

41%

Outsiders

WGNA

10

0.27

+23%

1

0.28

0.28

19

45%

56%

The Americans

FX

3

0.24

-17%

4

0.27

-36%

0.20

14

36%

56%

Young and Hungry

FREE

9

0.23

+10%

2

0.26

-28%

0.25

17

61%

Girls

HBO

7

0.28

+8%

5

0.25

-14%

0.25

17

60%

45%

Baby Daddy

FREE

9

0.22

+5%

2

0.24

-38%

0.23

16

58%

Faking It

MTV

13

0.19

-10%

2

0.22

-40%

0.22

15

59%

Vinyl

HBO

8

0.20

-9%

1

0.22

0.22

15

45%

59%

Damien

A&E

5

0.12

-29%

1

0.20

0.16

11

48%

36%

Motive

USA

1

0.20

3

0.20

0.14

10

36%

Wynonna Earp

SYFY

1

0.20

1

0.20

0.14

10

32%

Stitchers

FREE

2

0.18

+6%

2

0.17

-61%

0.13

9

50%

The Cablemetrics table can be sorted by clicking any of the categories at the top (and a second click will sort in the other direction.) After having sorted by a category, you can hold SHIFT and click another category to sort by the second category within the first.